Summer Friends and Family Fun

The last two weeks have been focused on family and friends and garden and work.  Last in the priority scheme has been working out.  We visited my hometown, celebrated all the family summer birthdays, and then my niece came for a 5 days visit full of bay area fun.

Yet another outdoor summer dinner:

Deviled eggs and quinoa bacon tomato salad

Workouts have still been happening, but only between the other stuff, in a functional, maintain basic fitness, kind-of way.

One of my favorite Mission Murals we saw on the 

niece's chosen site-seeing trip in SF

I did 25 miles over 2 weeks (so half my normal mileage) including 4.5 miles of run-walking with a bestie in Norcal in the heat and under the smoke that was just short of dangerous, 2 small but not lame track workouts (7X400 @ sub 9/mile pace in one and 5X0.25 at 8:41 and 0.5% treadmill incline in the other). My niece was nice enough to join me on a Sunday AM 75 minute hot yoga class that *KICKED* *MY* ASS*.

The beautiful beaches of Half Moon Bay.

The longest continuous effort I made was 7 miles run (11:46/mile) before packing up my bags to go to Philadelphia for a wedding where I hid from the humidity and walked about 3 miles total over 3 days, including a quick indoor gym workout where I did random core interspersed with TM speedwork.

Tomatoes, cheese & bread.  Heavenly.

The wedding was for a close friend of our family with whom we'd lost most contact in the last few years.  It was awesome to be there and reconnect with the groom, meet the bride, and see the extended family.  We're so glad we went and are hopeful this will lead to a sustained reconnection.

The harvest we came home to!

The garden has actually been taking quite a bit of time between trimming, harvesting, watering, weeding, and preserving/gifting food -- it's not really a work-out, but it is one of my favorite hobbies (plus it pays food-related dividends), so I'm happy to trade time spent running for time spent with the plants.

Pimientos de padron y tomates! Sabroso!

The only "race-like" effort I put in over the last 2 weeks was a late-for-the-plane sprint through the airport for a few minutes.  I felt fast and strong (if a bit ridiculous), despite the huge purse and backpack I had to manage.  I arrived at the gate to E (who'd gone ahead while I checked the bag) motioning that I could stop and I kind of wanted to keep going.  But, I was also happy to see how quickly my breathing recovered -- yay interval training!

I love dahlias and it was peak season at the Golden Gate Park

Dahlia Garden during our site-seeing tour.

The next 3 weeks have me homebound, gardening, working, and hopefully getting in some good workouts, with a 5K on labor day weekend and a 10K the weekend after that.